Patrick W. Galbraith - The Moé Manifesto: An Insider’s Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime, and Gaming

I to Kimio , born in 1951, is a professor at Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters. His area of academic specialization is cultural sociology, and he is one of the founders of Mens Studies ( danseigaku ) in Japan. Ito believes that although gender roles have changed in the post-industrial world, this is more true for women than for men, who still tend to be defined by a narrow set of expectations. The ideal man in Japan, for example, remains the salaryman, who is productive at work and a provider at home. In this interview, Ito recalls his personal anxiety about masculinity as a young man growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, surrounded by a militant student movement and on the cusp of adult manhood, Ito took pleasure in things feminine, such as shojo manga (manga for girls), and sought in them an alternative to masculine bravado.

PHOTOGRAPH BY FRITZ SCHUMANN

An Alternative to Masculine Bravado

Patrick W. Galbraith (PG) : What do you research?

Ito Kimio (IK) : My research is on politics in a broad sense. Not political parties and voting, but rather the everyday politics of oppression, resistance, and compromise. I observe issues of authority and power relations in culture. I mean culture in a broad sense tooas in the way of thinking about and looking at things. So my work at the broadest level is about politics and culture, and Im particularly interested in the effect of politics and culture on men and masculinity in Japan.

PG : You have also written on popular culture.

IK : I have written several books on manga and anime as part of my larger interest in boys culture. You might not be aware of this, but before the Second World War, Japanese print media targeting boys was filled with images of extremely feminine masculinity. A good example is the work of Takabatake Kasho, who was a popular illustrator from the 1910s to the 1930s. Though these are prewar images, they resonate with the contemporary shojo manga that feature beautiful boy characters. Nor are they dissimilar to the kinds of illustrations you get in boys love manga. But at the time, these images represented the strong young men of a proud military nation, and before 1945 you would often see this type of character in war scenes. After 1945, shonen manga (manga for boys) didnt feature many war scenes, but when you get to the 1970s, you have popular shonen manga about school gangs and martial arts, a world of bodily violence. Or you have stories about giant robots, a world of mechanical violence.

COURTESY OF YAYOI MUSEUM

Takabatake Kashos beautiful boy

COURTESY OF YAYOI MUSEUM

Takabatake Kashos beautiful boys

PG : What was it like in Japan in the 1970s?

IK : In the 1960s there had been huge social movements in Japan against wars in Asia and our security treaty with America. After a decade of demonstrations and protests, the student movement died off, leaving a sense of fatigue on the political left. Going into the 1970s, there was a sense that young men had run out of steameven their manga werent that interesting. On the other hand, girls culture started to expand rapidly. Con sumer culture was on the rise, and with it so-called cute culture ( kawaii bunka )Hello Kitty and fancy goods. This was also a time when shojo manga was really maturing. Women such as Oshima Yumiko, Hagio Moto, Takemiya Keiko, and Yamagishi Ryoko were all creating manga at this time. The early 1970s was the peak of the shojo manga scene in Japan, overshadowing anything going on in shonen manga.

PG : I understand that you were reading shojo manga, too.

IK : Right. Shojo manga provided an outlet for my anxieties about gender at the time. I was probably also critical of the macho world depicted in shonen manga. My unease with gender norms drew me to genres targeting female readers such as boys love by writers such as Hagio Moto. There were a few others around me in the student movement also reading shojo manga, but it is a fact that most of society thought we were strange. More men, mostly college students, started reading shojo manga a little later. It wasnt that big of a trend, but they were reading Mutsu A-ko, who writes manga with a feminine touch ( otomechikku ), all about romance and everyday life, rather than the epic adventures youd get in shonen manga. Men were searching for alternatives and this is one of the things they found.

PG : You recall being isolated and thought of as strange, but you werent alone in read ing shojo manga. Harada Teruo, the first president of the Comic Market, Tokyos twice-yearly gathering for producers of fanzines, was a huge fan of Hagio Moto. In fact, he participated in the fan production of an animated version of her manga November Gymnasium that was screened at the first Comic Market in 1975. Many of the contributors to the legendary fanzine Meikyu were into shojo manga. Author Otsuka Eiji wrote a book about the premiums given away with shojo manga magazines. Why do you think that so many men were into it?

IK : Girls culture was more interesting. Immediately after the Second World War, boys culture was far more abundant and diverse in Japan. From the 1970s, however, the amount of shojo manga increased dramatically as girls found a place for themselves in the new consumer culture. Boys and men started to borrow from them as they searched for their own place in a changing society.

THOMA NO SHINZO 1975 MOTO HAGIO/SHOGAKUKAN

Hagio Moto wrote boys love manga

PG : How would you position otaku in this larger field?

IK : One of the hallmarks of todays consumer society is that people maintain a certain amount of distance from each other while using popular culture to mediate interactions and make friends. Otaku the hardcore fans of manga and anime who appeared in the 1970sare an example of this dynamic. Looking at this issue from a gender studies perspective, otaku are those boys and men who are attracted to the bright colors of girls culture and reject the monotone of adult male culture. But otaku maintain physical distance from the opposite sex and instead they form intimate relationships with fictional characters from manga and anime. Otaku are said to have a two-dimensional complex ( nijigen konpurekkusu ), meaning that they prefer fictional characters over real women. To me, this culture of maintaining a distance from the human body and idolizing fictional characters connects to what we now call mo .

PG : So can you clarify your definition of mo ?

IK : Mo is a feeling for two-dimensional entities. One doesnt have to risk getting hurt in a relationship with a fictional character, and can also control the character. Otaku are not good at navigating relationships with real women, but they can manage fictional women.